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Monday, 16 June 2014

AFI - 'Burials' review

Well, we've been a little quiet since the release of issue five, but that's not to say we haven't been hella busy; all being well, the new issue should be out early July with a nice little surprise, so in the mean-time, here's a review taken from the last issue, this time of AFI's latest effort, 'Burials'...

AFI
- 'Burials' review

"Well,
AFI were one of my favourite bands whilst growing up, this being
during their 'The Art of Drowning' / 'Sing the Sorrow' era (of which
I know Nat is also a big fan), and for me, especially the former,
these are their two masterpieces, and though 'DecemberUnderground'
had it's few moments of genius, I lost track after that, resigning
myself to the expectation that said album would be the last that
contained any such moments. So, in the meantime it appears I've
missed an album, and have been lent this, their latest effort, and
was I right? Well, at least for the time being, I reckon so, yeah,
but that's not to say that this is bad.

As much as everyone will
obsess over Davey, and as crucial as he obviously is to AFI as their
founding vocalist, I've always thought that Jade is a bit of a
genius; they went from being 'good' to being 'magic' when he joined,
and, as evident here, he's still writing very interesting stuff, but
for those that haven't picked up an AFI album in a while, it's now
more NINE INCH NAILS than MISFITS; more LINKIN PARK than old
OFFSPRING, and if that's how they prefer to go about things and
express themselves these days, then I guess that's fine. So what we
have here is 13 tracks of largely slow, heavily layered, distorted
pop-rock that I guess leans closer to 'Crash Love' than anything they
did prior. A lot of the orchestral / theatrical atmosphere has gone
too, replaced by a kind of overpowering, digital distortion on the
guitars, as you can hear in single 'I Hope You Suffer'. Some of it's
pretty catchy, especially other single '17 Crimes', and 'A Deep Slow
Panic' is upbeat and hooky, but yeah, admittedly I'm struggling to
'get into it'.

Most people reading this will already have an opinion
on AFI, and will know whether they're going to get this or not. I'm
kind of on the fence; this was a bit better than I thought it'd be,
but if you love their old stuff, don't expect this to give you
goosebumps."